The Female Quixote as Promoter of Social Literacy

Authors

Amy Hodges, University of Arkansas

Author Biography

Amy Hodges is a recent PhD graduate of the University of Arkansas, where she currently works as an instructor of ESL and composition. Her research focuses on how personal and cultural attitudes toward literacy impact identity construction. She also coordinates Razorback Writers http://rbwriters.uark.edu/ and other literacy projects in the Arkansas Delta.

Abstract

In Charlotte Lennox’s The Female Quixote, the unruly Arabella clashes with the eighteenth century’s conception of England as an orderly, unromantic site of commercial trade. Arabella’s romances prompt her to expect certain power structures from English society; she invites others to see her body as a spectacle and expects that her actions will solidify her status as a powerful woman. Yet Lennox reveals that English society sees Arabella’s body not as powerful, but as an object upon which they may construct their own potential site for the exchange of knowledge, an objectification that neither Arabella nor Lennox are prepared to accept. I argue that Lennox teaches her reader to read English social spaces in terms of discourses of power, thereby giving women the literacy skills to read their own subjectivity according to their position in both romantic and unromantic public spaces.

Keywords

literacy, women, spectacle, reading

Recommended Citation

Hodges, Amy (2013) "The Female Quixote as Promoter of Social Literacy," ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830: Vol.3: Iss.1, Article 1.
http://dx.doi.org/10.5038/2157-7129.3.1.1
Available at: https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/abo/vol3/iss1/1